The remains of the day.  After the food was eaten, the wine drunk and the stories told.

I had a little dinner last night for three women who are in my writing group as well as their husbands, one of whom is also a writer.  It was a magical evening, starting with a spectacular sunset I was too busy to photograph. We were on my back porch, which empties onto the sand.  The ocean is less than twenty steps away, the sun dipping into it like a great teabag, staining a pathway through the rolling waves.

After dinner and a good deal of wine as well as wonderful conversation, including each of us telling the others what we had done to deserve being in this beautiful place with these people, I asked everyone to read a piece they’d written.  My friend Linda Crosfield read this piece and gave me permission to share it with you.  I’ll put the first five stanzas here, then give you a link to her blog where you can see the last five stanzas.  Just scroll down through a few other poems on her blog and you’ll find it:

Ten Ways I’d Prefer Not to Die

i

Not for me Virginia’s stony stride
through sweet-sipped waters
meant to cool the brow
slake the thirst
streaming veil the cresting waves’
white dress—white death

ii

Not for me the sound of my own bones
crunched in some heedless mouth
wrapped ‘round my head.
Don’t care if it’s protecting young
or its next meal
let not that meal be me

iii

No fall from trees or towers
no plummet to the ground
my fifteen minute’s fame
reduced to a couple of lines
on page fourteen of some newspaper
no one reads any more

iv

No snow-swept hills
no avalanche for me
I carry no transceiver

v

No rattler will reduce my flesh to sponge
its spring-thaw poison coursing through my veins
the horror of the strike
making all that follows
the lesser nightmare

Now, to see the remaining 5 ways, go to Linda’s blog where you will see other wonderful poems she has written as well: http://purplemountainpoems.blogspot.mx/2012/11/poetry-as-conversation.html